Shipt, which charges members $99 a year, sends people out to choose and deliver groceries from stores. Target said Wednesday that it will add more products to the service next year, such as home goods and electronics. Target shoppers will have to make orders through Shipt’s app or website and pay the annual fee to get same-day delivery. There are plans to incorporate Shipt into Target’s app and website, but the companies did not say when that would happen.

Retailers have been looking for ways to speed up delivery as they try to match the fast service offered by Amazon.com Inc. Earlier this year, Target bought a delivery logistics company to offer same-day service to in-store shoppers.

Minneapolis-based Target expects half of its 1,800 stores to offer Shipt’s service by next summer. It’ll be available at most of its stores by the 2018 holiday shopping season, it said.

“This is yet another example of a brick-and-mortar retailer leveraging its physical assets to improve its online offerings,” said Moody’s retail analyst Charlie O’Shea.

Shipt, founded in 2014, will operate independently from Target and remain in its headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama. Shipt said it will keep working with other retailers, such as Costco and Meijer. Shipt said it won’t share customer data from Target’s rivals with its new owner.

Target said it expected the deal to be completed before the end of this year.

Addressed to Marsha Senators Roger Wicker and Brian Shatz, along with members of Congress Marsha Blackburn and Michael Doyle, the letter carries the blunt title, “Internet Pioneers and Leaders Tell the FCC: You Don’t Understand How the Internet Works.”Overturn Net Neutrality? The internet’s founders have a word on that…

Among the signees are Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf and Steve Wozniak, along with fellow tech pioneers and top names from Mozilla, Betaworks, Internet Archive and Tufts. The letter asks that the politicians call on Ajit Pai to cancel the planned December 14 “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” vote that looks to overturn Obama-era regulation that established net neutrality rules.

The note calls out the FCC for failing to hold open meetings and seemingly ignoring the millions of comments submitted by the public. The signees also point to a 43-page comment submitted to the commission over the summer on behalf of many of the same names.

“The proposed Order would also repeal oversight over other unreasonable discrimination and unreasonable practices, and over interconnection with last-mile Internet access providers,” the letter reads. “The proposed Order removes long-standing FCC oversight over Internet access providers without an adequate replacement to protect consumers, free markets and online innovation.”

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Panama Canal overtakes Suez on Asia-US East Coast route. This makes sense….. those new locks makes it easier on shippers.

Top US trucking lobby outlines wishes for Trump administration

City officials have dropped the idea of selling the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, but are continuing to explore the possibility of a public-private partnership for the short line that handles switching for the port’s six Class I railroads.

RailAmerica for Sale, Report Says

Transport providers hold firm against attacks on NAFTA, trade pacts.

Democrats and Republicans alike are encouraged that a Trump Administration could inject freight infrastructure with a much-needed funding boost.

Steady growth in e-commerce activity is driving a surge in the parcel delivery business, and strengthening the role of EDI in processing and auditing freight payments.

The Trump administration’s plan for a broad-based regulatory rollback could shorten the duration of any future truck capacity shortfall.

Shippers, trucking companies, container lines and others are starting to get a better idea of what Trump can and can’t deliver. Ignore the armchair analysis of Trump’s campaign rhetoric.

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BROWARD COUNTY, FL – Terminal operators at Broward County’s Port Everglades say they are already equipped to help shippers handle the new international container weight verification requirements that go into effect on July 1, 2016.

Certified scales are available at several locations throughout Port Everglades to use to weigh export containers. Ocean shippers are encouraged to confirm availability and fees with their contracted marine terminal operators for compliance with the new verified gross mass (VGM) requirements.

“On-port scales, which have already been certified by the state, should help shippers meet the new requirements without services delays,” said Port Everglades Chief Executive & Port Director Steve Cernak. “There are still concerns about the new requirements, but the availability of scales at Port Everglades should not be one of them.”

The International Maritime Organization approved new container weight verification rules to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) that go into effect on July 1, 2016. The new rules require the shipper of a packed container, regardless of who packed the container, to verify and provide the container’s gross verified weight to the ocean carrier and port terminal representative prior to it being loaded onto a ship. A verified container weight is a condition for loading a packed container aboard a vessel for export. The vessel operator and the terminal operator are required to use verified container weights in vessel stowage plans and are prohibited from loading a packed container aboard a vessel for export if the container does not have a verified container weight.

At the crossroads of north-south and east-west trade, Broward County’s Port Everglades is Florida’s leading container port, handling more than one million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units, the industry standard measurement for container volumes) and serving as a gateway to Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Located within the cities of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Dania Beach, Florida, Port Everglades is in the heart of one of the world’s largest consumer regions, including a constant flow of 110 million visitors statewide and 6.7 million residents within an 80-mile radius. Port Everglades has direct access to the interstate highway system and the Florida East Coast Railway’s 43-acre intermodal container transfer facility, and is closer to the Atlantic Shipping Lanes than any other Southeastern U.S. port. Ongoing capital improvements and expansion ensure that Port Everglades continues to handle future growth in container traffic. A world-class cargo handling facility, Port Everglades serves as an ideal point of entry and departure for products shipped around the world.

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Omni-channel has become a dated term. In this age of digital information available anytime and anywhere there are precious few shopping decisions being made without fact based information. A MasterCard report from 2015 shows that 8 out of 10 purchases made by retail shoppers are informed by some kind of digital information. With 80 percent of purchase decisions influenced by shopper research, their decisions about just where to buy is likely to come down to convenience and timing rather than loyalty. Omni-channel shopping is now just plain shopping.

Retailers need to be sure they are focusing on the most important factors driving their customers – information. In fact the source of information needs to begin at the source, and that source should be the manufacturer or supplier. It may be a strange environment for manufacturers but the production and dissemination of product information can’t come from a better place. But capabilities vary widely in terms of the ability of product suppliers to create, produce, and market their products.

Originally developed for its Demand Planning Software, a supplier’s Wholesale Inventory information can be automatically added to the ERS Software Platform. This information combined with projected sales at retail helps manufacturers determine what inventory buys to make and went to make them.

Once ERS clients learned of this capability, they wanted the inventory added to the Retail Sales Analysis software. While ERP systems offer such information, they typically are not very flexible in how it is reported. ERS’ Intelligent Retail Platform allows for total customized reporting. For instance, now clients may list their Wholesale Inventory position in a column in their retail sales reports, making it easy for salespeople to see if they were in stock before they contact their retail partner to offer to ship fill in inventory. As all values pass to reporting – from POS to forecasts – retailers and suppliers have past, present and future views in one report.

“We did not anticipate the need for wholesale inventory in sales reporting” says David Matsil, President of Business Development at Enhanced Retail Solutions. “Yet once the need was described, we understood the benefit immediately and were happy to open up that functionality”.

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With the holiday season quickly approaching, electronics retailers couldn’t be in a better position to make record breaking sales, exceeding the $1 trillion earned in 2014. Electronics make ideal gifts, and electronic stores are one of the largest revenue generating distributors, accounting for 13.6% of all holiday sales. However, OEMs won’t cash in unless they have the right omnichannel infrastructure in place.

Electronics constitute one of the leading purchases made for dads, and accounted for 20% of Father’s Day sales this past June. With the rise of tablets, mobile phones and wearables, retailers can expect this category to grow. While 2015 looks at sustained growth with these product lines, Steve Koenig, senior director at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), advises not to overlook other electronics that are also predicted to be big for business. Koenig explained, “Consumer decisions to replace their TVs at home with Ultra HD 4K units should provide a much-needed boost to the TV industry, while new smartwatches and other high-tech wearables will also expand that growing category this year.”

In the news, Apple has already created fierce demand with the launch of its latest rendition of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. To address this frenzy, Apple executives released a statement that online orders have been “exceptionally strong and exceeded our own forecasts for the preorder period. We are working to catch up as quickly as we can, and we will have iPhone 6s Plus as well as iPhone 6s units available at Apple retail stores when they open next Friday.”

It’s not only smart phone and tablet producers that will go through this inventory and production pressure. The CEA advises that while total shopping category continues to grow, the channels that consumers shop across have changed drastically, leading to the introduction of omnichannel shopping.

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